Neither did Lynn evidently, who was already up and on the move, dragging Erin into step behind her and urging her to hurry. They dashed down along the edge of the creek, their frenzied steps throwing up splashes of water with each impact. Erin was pumping her legs as quickly as she could, several times almost stumbling and falling in her unrelenting haste.
Far behind them came anther loud, high-pitched cry from the winged creature. It carried a noticeably different tone. Unlike the cries that it had made before, this one sounded like a cry of tremendous agony.
It was followed a moment later by another thunderous roar. The piercing cry of the winged entity was then abruptly cut off, the roar ebbed, and the forest fell into silence once more.
The cessation of the chaotic dissonance did not lesson the frightful panic that Erin felt racing through her veins.
Erin and Lynn continued their urgent sprint, putting plenty of distance between themselves and the area where the creatures were. Only when her lungs were about to burst, and her leg muscles felt gelatinous from being pushed to their utmost limits, did they finally reduce their speed down to a jog and begin to reclaim their breath.
“What is going on…?” Erin asked between heavy gasps for air.
Inwardly, she cursed her life of sedate activity. Exhausted and winded, she knew that she was going to pay a very steep price for her prolonged lack of regular physical exercise.
Calling up all her willpower, she trudged onward, keeping by Lynn’s side.
“I have… no idea,” Lynn replied, between her own heaving gulps of breath.
Though in better physical shape than Erin, Lynn was still far from prepared for the ordeal that they found themselves in.
“Then, what do we do?” Erin asked, her voice despondent.
She looked to Lynn, as she took a few protracted breaths. Her heart continued to pound rapidly in her chest, strained by exertion and fear.
Lynn slowed down further, turning aside towards a spot where they could easily scramble up the bank. Before answering Erin, she dug into the incline, using her hands to help propel her upwards.
When she stood at the top, she turned around and looked down to where Erin had come to a stop at the base of the embankment.
“For now, we just keep going,” Lynn said.
Leaning over and reaching out, she took Erin’s hand and helped her up to the top of the bank. Standing at Lynn’s side, Erin cast a distressed glance back down the creek. Fortunately, there was no sight or sound of any pursuit.
A wave of dizziness then came over Erin as she stood still, sweat beading and beginning to trickle down her warming face. The young woman then hunched over, her hands braced upon her knees. She felt a light wave of nausea. It was all that she could do to remain relaxed, and avoid the eruption of violent heaves.
“Breath slow,” Lynn advised, placing a hand on her friend’s back.
Erin closed her eyes and drew in a long inhalation, letting it out slowly. She repeated the process a couple more times.
“We keep going, but to where?” Erin asked between breaths, teetering on the edge of vomiting.
“I don’t know,” Lynn replied simply, after a long pause.
Erin glanced over at her friend, who had straightened up, placed hands on her hips, and was now looking around them.
The forest was quiescent, and the only sound in Erin’s ears was that of leaves rustling in soft breezes. Whether it was paranoia, or just keen perception, Erin felt a prickly sensation along the nape of her neck. She sensed that they were being watched.
“Do you feel it?” Erin whispered curtly. “Like someone… or something… is watching us.”
Lynn nodded quietly, her eyes wide as her gaze darted about.
“We’d better get something to hit back with,” Lynn said at last, her eyes lowering as took a couple of steps away from the bank. She then warned, “We aren’t going to be able to run much more.”
Making her way over to a tree with low branches, she put both her arms out, wrapping her fingers around on a strong-looking branch. With a forceful, backward pull that engaged her body weight, Lynn snapped the branch off the tree.
Quickly, she set about stripping all of the extraneous shoots from the main branch.
“For you,” Lynn announced to Erin, handing her the makeshift staff. “It won’t be brittle, at least.”
Lynn walked back over and repeated the process on a similarly stout-looking branch attached to a nearby tree.
“And for me,” Lynn remarked as she bared the branch.
The branch felt solid enough in Erin’s hands, and she knew that it could deliver a crunching impact. At the very least, Erin knew that they now possessed usable walking staves.
Erin set one end of the branch in the ground and straightened up, feeling another wave of dizziness and nausea pass over her. She leaned some of her weight upon the staff that she now held, closing her eyes and taking another couple of long, careful breaths.
Erin plodded over to where Lynn stood, her legs heavy and drained. As their eyes met, Erin could see a reflection of the fear that she was still wrestling with.
“Just relax yourself Erin, as much as you can,” urged Lynn, glancing downward.
Erin followed her friend’s gaze, and noticed the whitened knuckles of her own right hand where she tightly gripped the wood staff.
Erin nodded slowly to Lynn, willing herself to relax her grip a little. “I’ll try… but I don’t know the first thing about what we’re gonna do.”
“And neither do I,” Lynn replied. “We’re both scared, just about out of our minds. We have to hope that this will all explain itself soon, and that we can somehow get out of here.”
“Not very comforting,” Erin said morosely. “And what if we can’t?”
Lynn shook her head. “Don’t think about that, Erin.”
Erin looked downward, unable to meet her friend’s eyes. She feared that Lynn would somehow be able to see inside her, as she slid further towards a state of sheer hopelessness.
They were completely lost, in the midst of an area that had already demonstrated that it held creatures of an inexplicable and terrifying nature within it. Erin did not have the first idea as to their whereabouts, and their lives had been threatened less than five minutes after becoming aware of their strange predicament.
“Come on, Erin, let’s at least get moving,” Lynn said. Branch in hand, her friend started off, following a path that ran atop the embankment, proceeding along the border of the creek.
Glancing down at the water, Erin saw that Lynn was heading upstream.
“Hey, wait up,” Erin said, jogging hastily to catch up to her friend. “Why go this way? We don’t know where we are, so we can’t know where we are heading.”
Lynn looked Erin in the eye as she continued her purposeful strides. “No… we don’t know what is happening. But if the creature that put a stop to our pursuit is territorial, I want to keep moving away from it. As a matter of fact…”
Lynn’s words trailed off as she turned aside, maneuvering back down the embankment and into the creek’s bed.
“Let’s keep our wits a little, and not leave any scent for anything to follow,” Lynn stated.
Erin scrambled down the embankment, stepping into the water and feeling the cold chill as it soaked into her shoes. That was the least of her worries as she strolled alongside Lynn, continuing their arduous trek upstream.
After just a few moments, Lynn seemed engrossed in studying the rocks of the creek bed. Seeing a few that rose out of the water, she moved over towards one in particular, laying the end of her branch-staff upon the rock’s edge.
She looked to Erin. “We can obscure our scents, and we can improve our weapons.”
Lynn began to scrape the end of her crude staff against the rock edge, and Erin quickly realized what her friend was doing. Seeing another similar rock, she got started on the improvements to her own.